Ep 10: Kyle hires a super team

Learn how to hire a super team.

Kyle Hires a Super Team

Featuring: Small Business Owner Kyle Goguen and Hiring Expert Dr. Brad Smart

On Episode 10 of This is Small Business, Andrea learns a few tricks for hiring a super team when she speaks with Kyle Goguen, Owner and Founder of Pawstruck, and hiring expert Dr. Brad Smart, Author of ‘Topgrading.’ Hiring is one of the trickiest – but most important – aspects of running a small business. Assembling the right team of people at the right time can mean the difference between growth and stagnation. But how do you find the right people to join your team, and avoid hiring the wrong ones? Essential listening if you’re getting ready to hire!

Kyle with his best friend and inspiration behind Pawstruck, Tyson.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] KYLE: Hire sooner than you think, you know, Ii business is going well, or you think it'll go well, you're gonna need help. And it was probably yesterday that you should have hired. You definitely can't do everything yourself.

[00:00:15] HOST: Hi I'm Andrea Marquez -- and This is Small Business – a podcast by Amazon. This show is all about learning how to start, build, and scale a small business. On each episode - I gather super valuable nuggets that I'm filing away in my small business playbook for future reference if I decide to start my own business one day. At the end of each episode -- I call out key takeaways for you to use on your small business journey.

Now, I'm no business expert -- but one thing I'm learning, the more I speak to smaller business owners -- is that it's super important to have a good team of people around you to help you execute your vision. So how do you do that? How do you go about finding the right people to help your business get lift-off? It's not that simple. You have to look at [00:01:00] personality type and qualifications. You have to identify what your business needs now -- and what it might need in the future. And then -- of course you want to think about things like references, and commitment, and whether the person is a good fit for your team.

Coming up -- I'll speak to a hiring and recruitment expert with 40 years of experience helping companies find and retain what he calls "A-Players" or top-grade employees. He's got a whole system for hiring that you're going to want to hear. But my first guest today knows all about the challenges of hiring a great team -- from the inside out. Kyle Goguen is the founder of Pawstruck -- a company that makes all natural dog treats. The company has grown rapidly -- and Kyle has had to keep pace with the growth through strategic hiring. He's here to tell us all about it.

And as always, before we get started I want to remind you to subscribe to This is Small Business on your preferred platform, and rate us on Apple Podcasts. [00:02:00] Leave us a review and let us know what you think. Shout out to listener William Prescott who said that they’re loving the podcast! Thank you! They mentioned that as a small business owner, it can be tough to find the time to find mentors that can help in different areas of what you do. So to hear from both the small business owner and the expert has been a great way for them to imagine how they could implement expert advice into their own practices. They 10 out of 10 would recommend us! So thank you and please join William Prescott in letting us know what you think of our little show This is Small Business.

[00:02:45] ANDREA: Kyle, thank you so much for being on This is Small Business today. I'm excited to talk to you.

[00:02:50] KYLE: Yeah, same here. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:52] ANDREA: Tell me about Pawstruck and how it got started.

[00:02:56] KYLE: Sure. Junior year of college, I adopted a boxer puppy named Tyson. [00:03:00] When I first got Tyson, I was trying to be a good dog owner. I visited a bunch of local pet stores getting 'em all the treats and shoes and, and different supplies that I needed to train him and, and to take care of 'em. And I was very much on a college students' budget. Tyson wasn't picky at all about the products that I was buying him, but I, I noticed, kind of a trend there in all the stores, everything that I wanted to buy had a ton of artificial ingredients. Stuff that I couldn't even read or understand on the ingredient label there. So I went home, searched on the internet, tried to find something I could buy online, some treats and chews with simpler ingredients that I could actually afford and realized what I wanted wasn't available. So that was my “AHA” moment back then in college. And I started working on getting Pawstruck up and running and right after graduating college, I think within six months or so, the business and pawstruck.com the, the initial website went live. [00:04:00] And to this day, our goal is to make it easy and fun for pet owners to shop online and give their dogs wholesome products. And yeah, it's been a fun ride and it's been super rewarding to build up a big team over the years, of a bunch of dog owners like myself. And I think we're up to about 40 people or so, and we're looking to hire a few more by, by the end of the year.

[00:04:25] ANDREA: All of these years later here you are with about 40 people and you keep growing.

[00:04:32] KYLE: Yep. That's right. Super lucky to have made the jump that early on. And I think if there's any college kids or anyone of any age, Really, my advice is just, you know, make the jump and make it happen. There's never like the perfect timing, but, I think college age kids, it's the perfect time cuz like I said, you're, you're used to eating ramen and your life is much simpler than most.

[00:04:57] ANDREA: So what does the word “team” mean to you? [00:05:00] What makes a right team member for Pawstruck?

[00:05:04] KYLE: That's a tough one. And I think team has meant many different things to me and Pawstruck over the years. Early on I waited too long to hire. I'd never managed a team, never hired people. And so at that time it was really just, okay, I'm in over my head. We've grown to the point where I can't do everything and the business is going to cease to exist unless I get someone in here. And so at that point it was just, desperation was probably what “team” meant. It was just like, get some other hands on board that can help. Now it's, it's way different. We're, you know, really trying to build out the right culture, the right skill sets, like we're way more, way more particular when it comes to hiring. But I've, I've just learned a ton over the years and I've been able to network with other business owners and really learn from them to understand how to find the right candidates, how to weed through the right candidates and build the team that, that I want. And that's been key, [00:06:00] is really documenting exactly what it is that I'm looking for. And then actually going after it.

[00:06:06] ANDREA: So this is super important. What are the key lessons you've learned in finding candidates for Pawstruck?

[00:06:12] KYLE: It's a numbers game. You have to get enough applicants into the pipeline to better your odds of finding the perfect candidate. So the way that we do this is number one, we're a completely remote team aside from our warehouse where we fulfill orders. And so that opens us up to way more candidates, as opposed to people who happen to live in a, you know, 10-mile radius, of your office or something like that. And then two, we spent a lot of time writing our job listings and description. We think of it like marketing copy, you have to get the readers excited about your company and job. So you get more applicants. If you just write some generic, you know, legal jargon, that's not fun. And that's not the people we wanna attract personally.

And then we make sure to post on all the job boards and we, we pay for ads essentially [00:07:00] to get them featured, to get more people applying. So the whole goal is to get the right people and as many of those potential right people into the funnel as possible. And so we put every single applicant through a pretty significant application process and also a second assessment. Which assesses their skills. And that gives us a way to really compare people, head-to-head outside of just a resume. I have, you know, very mixed feelings about resumes. Like resumes can be really misleading and really not give you an idea of someone's true experience, level and skills. So I think the assessment does a really good job of cutting through the noise for us. So we're weeding out people that won't fit for our culture. And if they pass that test, then we move them onto the final one-on-one round, which is kind of bringing it all together, them proving that they have the skills and the culture fit that we think they do based on the previous stuff.

[00:08:00] ANDREA: And who's part of these internal decisions for hiring people?

[00:08:04] KYLE: So early on, it was just me and then for a while it was just myself and one other person. And now. Whoever we have leading a specific department, if we're hiring to that department, um, they, along with our HR admin person are the ones that do the initial finding of candidates. So they create the job listing. They post it, they get those applicants into our funnel. Essentially, they're weeding people out. And once they get farther down into the interview process. Then I'll also get involved and wanna chat with people. And it goes both ways. Like I want to be involved at that point to make sure that I agree that these people are a good culture fit, but also I get involved to sell ourselves, like the really good candidates, us as a company, we need to sell ourselves to them and convince them that there's a ton of opportunity. Like, it'll be a fun place to work. Uh, you know, [00:09:00] all of the things that an A plus player would seek out in a job. That's my job to explain to them why we are that for them.

[00:09:12] ANDREA: Can you give me an example of what you would tell me if you wanted to hire me?

[00:09:16] KYLE: Something that I always bring up, we often look for entrepreneurial people. Because we are really fast growing and we want people to kind of like own their specific role and take it and run with it. Um, so what I talk about with people is like, oftentimes we're looking for... you know, even if it's like a hobby, like something that you're doing on your own or some interest you have outside of just work. And I explain to people that we encourage that. That'll never be something we'll hold against people. So in the past, I've, you know, given people time to work on, you know, writing their novel, they were working on, or starting this like influencer account that they wanted to do. And, uh, we've encouraged it. And, you know, even allocated a little bit of time during work hours for me to [00:10:00] help almost like consult in some ways, if they wanted it, happy to talk through their business plan or, or their goals and give them advice. So I don't know if that partially is selfish cuz I'm nosy and wanna know the cool projects that my team is working on and be a part of it. But also I think a lot of the, the, the people that we're looking for see that as a benefit that the leadership team that's trying to hire them is invested in their future. Both in the job that they're being hired for and outside of that too.

[00:10:28] ANDREA: That's really cool. And I think that's something that a small business owner listening could apply because I was certainly drawn to that! I have a lot of hobbies and actually podcasting, this is something I got into as a side thing from my actual job. The first company I worked in, helped me to, you know, gave me the time and gave me some resources to start my first podcast as well. And to me, that was a big draw and part of what made me happy to work there. So have you ever hired someone and realized after [00:11:00] that it isn't the right fit?

[00:11:02] KYLE: I think everybody who's done any amount of hiring has made mistakes and hired the wrong person. And what I've found is oftentimes it was my own fault. You know, usually it's not someone who's lying on their resume or, you know, something like that. It's usually that I didn't go with my gut. Um, or we didn't outline the responsibilities or the role well enough, especially for new roles, like really understanding who would be a good fit for that and made mistakes there. So I guess to expand on that a little bit further, what I mean is we got excited, like, you know, there was candidates with these cool background and we're like, great, look what they can bring to the table, but that really didn't matter for the role.

[00:11:52] And so that's tough as a manager to, to reflect and understand that you made a mistake and, and what was hard for me early on, in especially was just being honest [00:12:00] with the person and having those hard conversations and talking through with them, Hey, here's what we need from you, here are the expectations. Is this something you can do? And then on both ends being honest and figuring out whether the person can do it and if they can't, moving on as soon as possible because, uh, it's for that person's own good as well. There's no point in wasting time in a role that they don't have a future in it. They don't like, and vice versa with someone who's not gonna be able to do what you need them to do.

[00:12:30] ANDREA: Okay. What would be some pieces of advice that you would give small business owners that are barely starting out. So, tap into Kyle when he was barely figuring out who to hire and bring on his team. Some tips you would give about how to even bring the right people in.

[00:12:50] KYLE: I guess it's really two avenues that I would recommend the first being start networking with other business owners in your industry as soon as possible. So for me, [00:13:00] I'm, you know, I'm in the pet industry, but the best people for me to network with are eCommerce business owners. So people who sell on Amazon, or maybe they sell on their website or other channels like that. So I found, you know, a handful of groups like that, and those people are often hiring the exact same roles that I need to hire for. And if you find people who are a step or two ahead of you, they've already hired everything. And so as you start to make friends and, and meet people and know people there it's as easy as emailing someone and saying, Hey, you know, I know you hired a marketing manager last year, you mind, if you share your job listing and job description with me? So that's the main thing I would recommend. If you don't have that network or you're still building that out, then the backup plan is just going on Indeed or wherever else you find jobs as an applicant and just going and finding other similar companies that are looking for the same roles and just download all of their job listings to a folder and then just cherry pick the best stuff and the stuff that you care about and want. Like just [00:14:00] take inspiration from stuff that's already been done well, and make it even better.

[00:14:04] ANDREA: I love that. And then as you get bigger, I'm thinking about how Amazon does its hiring practices. Obviously, the CEO is not involved in every single hiring decision. That would be impossible. But I do remember that they do teach you how Jeff Bezos, way at the beginning, he was involved in every single hiring decision and he set up the process of interviewing to what it is today. So I think that's also important, right? Like setting up those mechanisms in a way that it doesn't need you to be there while at the same time allowing the needs for your company to still be met.

[00:14:42] KYLE: Yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, hiring is like almost any part of your business. At a certain point, you have to build, you know, standard operating procedures, that your team can replicate. Otherwise, they're just gonna be reinventing things every time they go do it, and you won't have consistent, you know, output or hiring in this case. [00:15:00] So like the way the things that we've been doing to make sure we're always hiring the right fit is. You know, we have very specific core values for our company that our team knows, and those are listed in job listings. And it's very clear to applicants telling them like, Hey, we don't hire anyone unless they fit all these things. So make sure you fit and you wanna work for a company that values these things.

And then we also have a set of questions that help identify good culture fits. And those are always the same. And we have examples of what are good answers and bad answers. So people can get an idea of what they're looking for. And then outside of that, you have to tailor the questions to the role, obviously, but the culture questions are almost always the same. And that's the most important thing when we're hiring, you know, uh, there's a lot of people out there that are good accountants, for example, but an accountant that's gonna cause problems with the rest of the team, cuz they're not a good culture fit, that's a huge issue and we don't want that.

[00:16:00] ANDREA: And I think one of my last questions for you, Kyle, is, what is something you would've done differently based on what you've learned today?

[00:16:08] KYLE: Yeah. I think my biggest piece of advice, especially for people who are early on in their business is, hire sooner than you think. If business is going well, or you think it'll go well, you're gonna need help. And it was probably yesterday that you should have hired. You definitely can't do everything yourself...

[00:16:23] ANDREA: When would be the right time to start hiring? Because you say hire sooner than you think, when is that moment that should trigger you to like start looking into that?

[00:16:33] KYLE: It's so hard, especially for new business owners with like smaller, limited budgets to decide when to hire. That's what I experienced at least. Right. It's like I didn't have a bunch of money set aside to bring anyone on. Um, looking back if I would've known what I know now, I would've told myself like, all right, as soon as you're in the weeds spending, you know, a lot of your time doing something that doesn't actually bring value to the business, that's probably when I would hire. So to give you specifics, what I mean by that early on, [00:17:00] I was doing all the fulfillment and customer service. And I did that for a really long time, which was great because I knew the business in and out. But at a certain point, when I was spending, you know, upwards of half to three quarters of my time shipping orders and answering the phone, I couldn't work on the things that would really grow the business. And not that we don't value the people that answer the phones and ship orders, but it is easier to find someone to help you out with that than hire someone to run your business. And it is also cheaper. So I think that's just maybe set, set your own number. It's like, all right, once I get to 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week where I'm doing something that I could easily pass off to someone, then go hire it and don't wait until it's taking up all of your time.

[00:17:50] ANDREA: Thank you so much for your time, Kyle.

[00:17:53] KYLE: Thanks.

[00:17:55] HOST: MIDPOINT: You're listening to This is Small Business -- brought to you by Amazon. I'm your host Andrea Marquez. [00:18:00] That was Kyle Goguen -- the Founder and CEO of Pawstruck... a dog approved source of healthy snacks and treats.

Did you know that more than half of the products sold on Amazon come from small-and-medium sized businesses? Pawstruck is one of the many small businesses selling on Amazon who have tapped into some of the tools and resources offered to help them succeed and grow. You can learn more about them in our show notes on our website ThisisSmallBusinesspodcast.com. And just a reminder that we want to bring YOU the ultimate listener experience through our podcast too. So if you have thoughts you want to share with us, send us a message to thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com, and if you enjoy listening to This is Small Business, text a link of this episode to your friends right now!

Kyle mentioned a few interesting things that jumped out at me. 1 -- he feels that a great culture fit is even more important than a great resume. And 2 -- [00:19:00] He urges people to hire help when they find they're spending too much of their time working on tasks that could easily be accomplished by others. And finally -- as you heard Kyle say -- it can be tricky to know exactly when to hire. The formula is different for everyone. And when you're a SMALL company -- hiring is a BIG decision. In a way, the smaller the company, the more critical it is to hire the right team.

To help us get some more ideas for how to hire an A-Plus "Topgrade" employee I'm joined by Brad Smart. Brad is the Founder and CEO of Topgrading, a consulting and software company dedicated to helping companies of all sizes improve performance and profits by hiring high performers. He's been in the business for over 40 years -- and he brings a wealth of perspective and some pretty cool stories. I'm excited for you to meet him and hear what he has to say.

[00:20:00] ANDREA: Brad Smart. Thank you so much for being on This is Small Business today. I'm excited to talk to you about a few things.

[00:20:05] BRAD: Happy to be here. This is consistent with my passion to share what knowledge I have with small business owners.

[00:20:14] ANDREA: Can you just give me a little bit about your background, your expertise, and why you're here?

[00:20:20] BRAD: I was a freshman in college, found business 101 kind of boring, but I knew I wanted a business career. Psych 101 was interesting. So there was a local management psychologist, talked with him and he made it seem that this is a way of maybe doing some things that are really cool and interesting. That talent is all important. So hiring is all important as a professional. You could be interviewing candidates for upper management positions, coaching people, doing team building. That sounded cool. So I went back home and went through yellow pages and saw some firms of management psychologists. Linked up with one [00:21:00] and they sort of mentored me and they said, I have to get a master's and a PhD in psychology that our clients will think you're really smart and have deep insights into people. Aha. So I went, got a masters, got a doctorate, and I joined the company, and here I was doctor Brad Smart expert in interviewing, expert in hiring, but I had never conducted an interview. Right.

[00:21:27] HOST: I. Love this. Brad -- whose last name is literally "smart" and who is a hiring expert with many years of experience – admits the irony of getting his start as an expert in something he hadn’t yet done himself. Sure he had the credentials on paper -- but he'd never actually done the thing he was hired to do. But clearly -- he was intelligent, passionate, and curious. All good things in a prospective employee.

[00:21:57] BRAD: And so I was the new kid on the block. [00:22:00] I asked a question after about a week and I feel stupid that I hadn't asked it earlier. How good are we? What do you mean? Of the people we interview and recommend for hire and are hired, what percent turned out to be the high performers that our clients want? And the senior partner I was talking to said, I don't know. You're the new kid on the block. Go talk to our clients, introduce yourself and ask them the question I did. And a couple weeks later it’s clear. The answer was about 33%. Wait a minute. We are the experts. And only 33% of the people we recommend turn out to be high performers? And I remember telling my wife, if I were a medical doctor and two thirds of my patients were leaving the hospital in body bags every day, this would not be too cool. So did I make a mistake and I, should I change careers or?... I instead said, I'm going to try to figure out why [00:23:00] hiring is so poor, frankly, and what solutions are. And I've devoted my life to it. Published six books on hiring and, um, my seventh book is focused on small companies.

[00:23:15] ANDREA: So I’ll ask you the question you’ve probably been asked many times before, how do you find the right people to join your team and avoid hiring the wrong ones?

[00:23:25] BRAD: Topgrading is all about hiring best of class. So that means recruiting a lot of people to start the funnel. And then you go through the steps of applicant, screening tools, and interviews, and so forth, down to hiring, hopefully an A player. You've got to use job boards, probably. All right. The job boards, there are a bunch of them, And yeah, there's some costs associated with them, but they all use artificial intelligence and they go after not just active candidates who have submitted their resume some place, but passive candidates [00:24:00] whose LinkedIn profile is out there. They find you wherever you are and so you can get a lot of applicants.

[00:24:10] HOST: I'd never really thought about the difference between active and passive job seekers. And I guess what Brad's saying here is that the job boards are particularly helpful for finding those people who are great -- but who may not actively be hunting for a job.

[00:24:25] BRAD: So even for the very small companies, it's worthwhile considering. Something else, use your people, use your people to recruit, make it something you talk about all the time. All right. Who do you know? Among your associates of friends, neighbors who might be an A player, high performer with our company. And if you recommend someone and we hire them, we'll give you a bonus. And the more A players you hire, the more A players will be interested in joining you. [00:25:00] A players wanna work with A players. That's what makes it a growth company and fun to work.

[00:25:06] HOST: Brad is really big on this A-Player idea... and so I asked him to define it a bit more for us.

[00:25:13] BRAD: A player. The way we define it covers a lot of competencies depending on what the job is, but it also definitely includes “fits the culture.” Has to. Someone can be outstanding at what they do and not fit the culture. And you fire them after three months that's not an, A player in our definition, they have to fit the culture, uh, which is obviously very challenging. You know, in the pandemic and hybrid models are being used and work at home or in the office and so forth. It's a moving target but one you just absolutely have to pay attention to.

[00:25:46] ANDREA: Are there any red flags, I should look out for?

[00:25:50] BRAD: Be sure when you start filtering through the resumes you get, tell anyone that you think you might want to talk with that a final step in hiring [00:26:00] is for them for candidates to arrange reference calls with managers they've reported to. That is huge. That will guaranteed improve your hiring success. The red flag is when, when their eyes get big and they say, uh, uh, uh, they're stumbling, they're stuttering. A players will say, sure, They're happy to do it.

[00:26:26] HOST: As Brad was talking - I started thinking, calling all those former managers could add a lot of time to your hiring search. But Brad's idea -- to have the candidates themselves arrange the reference calls -- is kind of brilliant. It puts the onus on them -- and tests both their motivation, and the truth about their relationships with their former bosses. But I did wonder how the job-seekers would react to this. Brad is blunt about this:

[00:26:50] BRAD: If anyone hesitates or they say, I don't think I could get my managers to talk with you. What's really going on is "busted!" Right? [00:27:00] My resume has a bunch of hype and I've excluded things from my resume and I would do it in the interviews. I was prepared to not disclose the fact that I was fired from three companies. So that's red flag number one. Another red flag is just, uh, is turnover. If people have only held jobs for six months, six months, six months, and you need them for three years, at least in order to justify hiring them, then that just won't cut it probably for you. So you need to have all that information. You need to have total information. And the recommended interview is a chronological interview where you go through the whole career and then you look for those red flags. And you'll see, as you go to job, two job, three job four, they overcome mistakes and failures. They maximize their strengths and you see how those acorns evolved into the Oak tree.

[00:27:57] ANDREA: That’s amazing. Thank you so much Brad for all of your valuable [00:28:00] teachings today.

[00:28:02] BRAD: Well you’re very welcome. Happy to do it Andrea.

[00:28:04] HOST: That was the illustrious Brad Smart - from Topgrading, a consulting and software company dedicated to helping companies of all sizes improve performance and profits by hiring high performers. I learned so much from both Kyle and Brad today -- and I hope you did too.

Some of the key takeaways for hiring a super team I’m adding to my small business playbook are:

  • Hiring is a numbers game. Before you can hire the right people to be on your team, you have to make sure that there are enough applicants to choose from. Kyle suggested that having remote roles helps widen your pool of applicants. And another way to attract more applicants is making sure that your job description sounds like something that your ideal applicants would want to be a part of. See it as a marketing exercise and find ways in which readers who are potential candidates get excited about your company.
  • And then, of course, you need to get the word out [00:29:00] so posting on all jobs boards is essential, and you can even pay for ads on them to ensure that the most people possible see those open roles. Brad also suggested leveraging employees and them connecting to their existing networks. Who better to talk about your company than employees themselves?
  • Once you find some candidates, you’re going to want to start weeding out the people who might not be a good fit for your business. Kyle and I talked about setting up a standard operating procedure to help cut through the noise and also replicate what works so that hiring practices are consistent and as a small business owner, you eventually don’t have to be involved in every part of the process which frees you up to keep running the business.
  • Then, once you get to the actual interviewing part, a good piece of advice that Kyle shared was showing prospective A players that leadership will invest in their growth by giving employees time to also work on their hobbies [00:30:00] or side hustles as a way to ensure that they have an opportunity to be entrepreneurial.
  • To avoid hiring the wrong people, both Kyle and Brad suggest, outlining roles clearly and making sure you’re hiring the right person for the role, not just because you’re excited about them. And of course, let candidates know that they need to set up reference calls with managers they have reported to in the past and pay attention to candidates with high turnovers.

Definitely all lessons to add to my small business playbook -- which is getting pretty hefty, I might add.

That's it for This is Small Business today.

On the next episode I will be talking to a small business that Lego lovers like me will particularly like. For toymakers, it can be difficult to plan for a full year considering large spikes in demand during holidays. So we’ll be learning about leveraging spikes in demand, and supply chain forecasting. Meanwhile, if you like what you heard, [00:31:00] subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode, and we want to know what you think so leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or email us at (thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com).

Until next time – This is Small Business, I'm your host Andrea Marquez -- Hasta luego -- and thanks for listening!

CREDITS: This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by JAR Audio. [00:31:35]

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